I know it has been a little quiet around here on the Lost Greetings blog. While I do plan to resume posting here more regularly, I would like to share with you another project I have been working on. I am at my core a generalist, and collecting postcards is only one small niche of many that I explore in my personal time. For awhile I thought about expanding the scope of this blog to include my other interests, but I came to the conclusion that that would stretch it beyond the bounds of its appeal. All this to say… If you like my work and my research, you will probably be interested in my new p ..read more

Like the previous Lost Greetings post, War Dad’s Canteen, Part 1, this card was produced to promote a service members’ place of respite near a major military hospital in Springfield, Missouri. Whereas the previously posted “War Dad’s Canteen Chapter No. 6” image showed the interior of the building, this one features the exterior and notes its location at “Frisco Station,” a significant depot on the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway. The postmark “P.O. ST-SF Sta.” stands to indicate this note was also placed in the mail at Frisco station. The postcard was sent by Sgt Marvin L. Ward to a youngste ..read more

Communities found innumerable ways to support the war effort, and locations like this service members’ canteen popped up like mushrooms wherever military personnel congregated in the early 1940’s. The American War Dads of Springfield produced this postcard to highlight their canteen, located adjacent to a passenger train station, but they also raised funds to sponsor the travel expenses of mothers visiting their sons at O’Reilly General Hospital. Known as “the Hospital with a Soul,” this Army medical center in Springfield, Missouri specialized in reconstructive surgery, plastic surgery, and p ..read more

For the two years my husband was in Army flight school, we dated long-distance. Then, cell phones had slide-out keyboards, Taylor Swift was a pubescent country artist, and the quest to post the coolest AOL instant messenger “away message” often occupied a corner of my thoughts. I sometimes wrote him letters, even though such a thing was, by then, terribly old fashioned for people our age. I remember occasionally writing to him while trying to stave off boredom in my Strategic Management class, as I worked toward finishing my senior year in college. Much of my correspondence is tucked away in ..read more

Have you ever found yourself in a close relationship with someone who shares your first name? For me, it was my roommate during freshman year of college. Someone in the housing office probably thought it was cute to assign us to a room together, or it could have been random happenstance. We coexisted well enough, but were certainly never bosom buddies. And, I don’t know about her, but I was frequently asked if I felt confused about our shared name situation. The harmless inquiries still strike me as mildly obtuse. I supposed in some scenario — if we had a visitor perhaps — we might both look ..read more

This postcard traveled from the itty-bitty town of Galilee, PA to Great Lakes, Illinois, home to a massive Navy installation which trained a staggering number of sailors for service in World War II. The front of this card features an aerial image of Camp Chicopee, a traditional summer camp which was located in the rural northwest corner of Pennsylvania near the New York state line. The camp was in operation until the late 1960s (source), but based on some Google Maps sleuthing, the land has since returned to private use and little trace remains of the buildings depicted in this photo. Regardi ..read more

On the front, we find a sedate pastoral image of George Washington’s estate at Mount Vernon. On the reverse, we read a list of presumed conquests in the form of a litany of female names, though I wager this note was written with tongue firmly in-cheek. This card was sent from Camp Barkley, Texas to Captain Cassidy, a chemical officer serving in Europe with the 9th Army (based on the APO listed, #339). The recipient may have needed some lighthearted cheer, because as of February 1945 (postmark of this card) the 9th Army had been heavily involved in the Battle of the Bulge, the last major Germa ..read more

This is not a postcard, but I also have an affinity for photos such as this. Though postcards have fallen out of popularity as short-form communication, packages are still of vital importance to everyone of us. This is especially true for Americans still serving in far-flung locations around the globe, just as they were in this candid photo from the Pacific Theater of World War II. Instead of being secured with clear packing tape, the parcels pictured here were carefully tied with string before being entrusted to the mail service to bring a bit of home to service members abroad. “Photograph of ..read more

Located on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Keesler Air Force Base is an active installation operated by the U.S. Air Force. However, it was known as Keesler Army Airfield when draftee Pvt. Ralph Wissinger found himself there in May of 1942. At that time the post had been in existence for less than a year. Keesler would become home not only to basic trainees like Wissinger, but would also train aviation mechanics. Notably, the installation hosted more than 7,000 black soldiers who trained in various technical fields, and many of the famous Tuskegee Airmen completed their basic training at Keesle ..read more